Page 17

From the Reforged pencil of Wong Yun

A year after the Japanese left, my father finally made it home.

Mother was chipper, spending less time in her workshop, and

even my grandmother left her room to enjoy the company of her only son.

Mr.

Gao came as often as usual, though now, instead

of whisking your mother away for the night, he would stay, laughing with my father.

The four of them would be up late, playing

mahjong, our mothers getting dressed up to go out, this time with their men, enjoying the jazz clubs, the swing dancing, all

the entertainment Shanghai had to offer.

For a brief period, the world seemed bright.

The city was finally under Chinese control,

there were grand plans to fix its port, improve transportation, maybe even build a transit system.

To develop the outer regions

to create more space for the crowds.

Mr.

Gao wanted to publicize what the Phoenix Pencil Company had done for the war, to

advertise our part in helping China.

Our mothers refused.

They did not want our powers known.

And my father agreed, adding:

“After all, we may need those powers again soon.”

The first sign of the civil war was inflation.

I remember the day your mother gave you money to buy rice while you were out

with your boy.

But you returned empty-handed.

The amount she had given you wasn’t enough.

“That should have been more than enough for a bag of rice,” my father said.

“I passed the stand last night.”

“That was last night,” you said evenly.

“It changed by this afternoon. It’s over a million yuan now.”

“This afternoon?” my father countered.

There was something so militant about him.

I did not know if that was how he always

was, or if the war had made him this way.

“Then you should have gone first thing.”

“I couldn’t,” you said, voice clipped.

“The stalls were closed. They close in the middle of the day now because they know

prices will be higher in a few hours.”

My father was ready to retaliate, to at least scold you for talking back to him.

You were saved by Ah-shin, who returned with

a limp bag of food scraps, complaining the stalls had changed their prices right in front of her, that they were setting themselves

up outside the banks so that customers could use their money as soon as possible, before it devalued even more.

The adults argued over the cause.

My father blamed the Communists for trying to force radical ideology onto a country that

needed stability.

Your mother argued the Nationalists were to blame, that they were keeping an army as large as the one they

had during the war against the Japanese and spent all their money on the military rather than using it for the aid the country

so desperately needed.

My father scoffed and shook his head at Mr.

Gao.

He clearly thought Mr.

Gao could do better than your mother.

Mr.

Gao gave

a helpless shrug.

Behind this exchange, you fumed.

That was before my father suggested the worst.

“It may be time to leave,” he said one day at dinner.

He had only been home a few months.

You flinched.

It was the first time anyone had mentioned leaving Shanghai.

“We’ll be fine,” my grandmother insisted.

My father and Mr.

Gao exchanged dark looks.

“If the Communists win, we won’t be able to stay here,” my father said.

“They won’t win,” my grandmother said firmly.

“Why wouldn’t we be able to stay?” I asked.

“We fought with the Nationalists,” he said.

“We own land. We run a capitalist business. They blame everything on landowners.

Their peasant armies are rampaging through the countryside, killing anyone they want. They would take everything from us.”

“We don’t need everything,” you said quietly.

My father looked at you, tilting his head.

He had never paid much attention to you.

“You have never had nothing.” His voice was cold.

“We worked for the life of comfort you live now.”

“We could afford to give some of this up,” you continued even as your mother shot you a glare.

“And you didn’t work for this

life. Our mothers did.”

“Meng!” your mother exclaimed.

“I didn’t work for this life?” His eyes flashed.

I shrank into my seat.

His anger was one of the few things I remembered from

the days before he left.

“I fought for it with my life! Was it your mother at the end of a Japanese gun, spared only because

he thought I was already dead? Was it you who could never sleep, because if it wasn’t the Japanese, it was the Communists

who were going to stab you in the back even as we fought the same war? You think the war ended because your mother was making

pencils? We ended the war—”

“The Americans ended the war,” you corrected.

“Be quiet,” your mother ordered.

If you wouldn’t listen to my father, you at least listened to her.

“Who made you think you are allowed to talk this way to your uncle? Was it that boy? Answer me.”

The others couldn’t tell, but I knew you.

I knew when you were upset, you lashed out, then went quiet.

Any further speaking

might cause the tears to fall, and you would not let that happen, not in front of this many people.

“There are far worse things than leaving a home.” My father’s voice was low.

“Calm down and eat,” my grandmother ordered.

She was the only one who could speak like that to my father.

We ate the rest

of our meal in silence.

At night, you paced our room.

“He was going to hit me,” you said.

“I don’t think he was—”

“He was. I could sense it. He would never hit you, but he would hit me, without a second thought.”

“I’m sorry.” I wasn’t only sorry for the way my father had treated you.

I was sorry that my father returned and yours didn’t.

That yours had been replaced with Mr.

Gao, a man you refused to trust, who never showed you any love, only your mother.

Refugees had poured into Shanghai during the war against the Japanese.

Now the opposite happened.

People began to leave out

of fear of the Communists.

The Nationalists lost battle after battle.

Not even scrappy Ah-shin could find enough food to buy.

There was no more hope of meat.

The only vegetables we had were pickled, and every bit of rice was watered down.

We once thought

we had a good amount of money saved.

It seemed we would blow right through it.

Our mothers skipped dinner often.

“We spend all this money on the military, and they can’t even win these battles against a bunch of peasants,” my father complained.

He read the news even more than my grandmother.

Those days, she normally contented herself sitting beside my father and nodding off.

“The Communists have infinite peasants to throw around as they please,” Mr.

Gao scoffed.

It was a soggy summer day a year into the civil war, as we ate our dinner of watery gruel, that you told us your boy and his

family were fleeing to Hong Kong.

His father, alarmed by the Communists’ crossing of the Yellow River into central China,

had already arranged their travel.

Your boy had offered to bring you, even to marry you if it would help get you out of Shanghai.

“I’m not going to, of course,” you said as you stared my father down, as if winning this argument with him was more important

than your life.

For all the resolve you showed our parents, you broke down in our room.

You wondered out loud if you were making a mistake,

sighed that you would miss him, but it would be too much to marry him, to move to a place like Hong Kong, wouldn’t it?

No,

you would not leave home again, would not leave us, would not upend your life all over again, even if it meant living through

another war.

No, it was not possible, even if you already missed him.

You were depressed for days.

It was your turn to write our story.

You wrote nothing.

Sometimes you made an effort to pick

up a pencil, to tap at a newspaper article.

Most often you were distracted by the contents of the articles—tales of savings

suddenly meaning nothing, reports that there were now seven hundred trillion yuan in circulation, compared to only a few trillion

a year ago, the never-ending string of suicides, businessmen found dead at the feet of Shanghai skyscrapers.

Your boy and his family, like many other families, left suddenly.

Only a day passed between when he asked you to go with him and when his family fled.

They owned significant land throughout Shanghai.

We had all heard the horrifying stories of what had been done to landowners in the countryside.

“I wish,” you told me one day, “that he had left me something to remember him by.”

How could I deny you after such a direct wish?

Every day I wanted to burn his notebook, but every day there were people at

home, whether it was our mothers, my father, or you.

You were so miserable, I reasoned, that even if I had wronged you by

stealing the boy’s pencil, perhaps I could start making up for it by admitting what I had done and sharing the Reforging.

And so I willingly gave the notebook to you.

You read it slowly while I waited on my bed, wishing I could disappear from the

room.

“How did you get this?” you asked, your voice betraying nothing.

I explained the trick.

“I wish I hadn’t done it,” I said honestly.

“I was so angry. I felt so left out, like you had abandoned me for this boy you

barely knew. But after I Reforged it, I understood. It was between you and him, and I shouldn’t have tried to meddle. I did

it because I loved you, really.”

You closed the notebook, gripping it tightly.

His words, gone through my body, into your hands.

“You know what your most outstanding trait is?” you said, your voice eerily even.

Then your eyes, dark and unreadable, locked

on mine.

Like it was only ever you and me.

“Your ability to lie.”

You walked out of our bedroom, slamming the door shut behind you.

I curled up into my bed, hugging my pillow.

I told myself I deserved it.

Even so, I cried.

I could have lived through any

war as long as you were there with me.

But for you to bury a knife so deeply into my heart with your words?

That was unbearable.

Two major events prevented you from cutting me off completely.

The first, at the start of the new year, my grandmother died.

She did so peacefully, in her sleep.

It was a small blessing, really, that she died before the civil war took a turn for the worse.

We burned folded paper for her, sent her messages that she had left the world at a good time, as one war ended and before

the next had displaced us.

It was the five of us—me and my parents, you, and your mother, all circled around the little metal

cylinder where our fire roared.

I folded a paper car for her.

I thought she would have liked having a car so she would not

have to burden her feet so much.

The fire ate it hungrily.

“She likes it,” my father said, placing a hand on my shoulder.

Mother tossed a whole pencil into the flame.

The flame chewed through it slowly.

I wondered what she had written with it,

what sorts of things she wanted to say to the mother-in-law who had been a controlling force all her married life.

But that

was a secret the pencil carried into the flame.

You and your mother burned paper, too, though you did not have to.

She was not your grandmother, and she had not been particularly

kind to either of you.

All the same, you went through the motions, bowed when appropriate, helped us light incense and wash

the fruit.

“Thank you.” My father bowed to you both, a small smoothing over of tensions.

I caught your eye, and you gave me a small nod.

Without my grandmother around, my father gained full control of the house.

I like to think for the most part he was kind.

Your mother, who had, since my father’s return, either been staying with us in our room or with Mr.

Gao, took my grandmother’s old room.

Our mothers continued running the pencil company.

Even the Americans enjoyed our pencils, though business faltered.

Our main source of income was the Nationalists who continued using them for their messages.

My father met with Mr.

Gao often, smoking in the courtyard, talking Nationalist strategy.

By then, Mr.

Gao knew all the women in the family could Reforge.

We would work in the factory, bleeding out our arms, while they talked in low voices and hypotheticals.

And the second event, at the end of that same year, was when my father announced over dinner that we would be leaving for

Taiwan.

“Taiwan?” you and I blurted at the same time.

“It is safe there.”

The year 1948 had not been a good one for the Nationalists.

I could feel it in the energy of the pencils, the desperation

of the messages, even though they were encoded.

They suffered defeat after defeat in the northeast, their best armies losing

to the peasants, who subsequently took their tanks and turned their own weapons against them.

The words they wrote were of

strategy and loyalty, a rebuilt China, but I could feel their fear when their hearts met mine—how their soldier salaries amounted

to nothing, not with this inflation, how much easier it would be to defect.

My father was sure that if the Nationalists did

not fall to the Communists, they would fall to inflation.

The paper that our money was printed on had become worth more than

the money itself.

Your mother frowned.

“Taiwan is... far from Shanghai.” She was looking at Mr.

Gao.

“That’s why it is safe,” he answered simply.

“I don’t mean physically. It’s the farthest thing from Shanghai. It’s not developed. There aren’t toilets. They think they’re

Japanese.” She said this last with a particular vehemence.

“The Japanese have left Taiwan,” my father cut in.

“Many of our friends are already there. The Nationalists have a hold. In

any case, it is up to you and Meng if you want to join us.”

“Come with me to Taiwan,” Mr.

Gao said gently.

He took your mother’s hand.

“It won’t be for long. Only a few months. Until

the Nationalists win the war.”

“I could wait here for you to come back,” your mother said.

“It won’t be safe here! The Communists will not spare you.”

“My husband fought for them,” your mother said evenly, staring down Mr.

Gao.

He left the table, his chair almost teetering to the floor.

On his way to the courtyard, he slammed the door so hard behind

him it jumped back open.

I could hear him light a cigarette.

“He wouldn’t have this problem if he would hurry up and marry you,” my father huffed.

“That is not a decision for only him to make,” your mother said.

“Regardless.” My father shook his head.

“We need to be ready to leave for Taiwan, whether or not you decide to come with us.”

Your mother began eating again, picking at the watery grains.

You glanced at me before quickly looking away.

“We still have time to think,” Mother assured us.

For so long, we had thought of the Japanese as our sole enemy.

In every one of our stories, as long as we defeated them, our

homes would be safe.

Yet what was forcing us to leave now was not any foreign power, Japanese or Western, but our own people.

Around us, it seemed all our former classmates were fleeing, many to Hong Kong, many to Taiwan, and the lucky ones, to America.

My father pulled all the strings he could and had a lead on plane tickets to Taiwan.

The only question was how many he would

need.

Mr.

Gao hounded your mother, trying to convince her to leave with the rest of us.

He was too involved with the Nationalists,

even more than my father, to have any hope of surviving a Communist takeover.

He showed up every day, telling your mother

how much he loved her, how much he wanted both of you by his side in Taiwan, how yes, it was an underdeveloped island, but

it was beautiful, like her, and the fruit so sweet, and how he’d wipe the overflowing juice of a mango clean from her chin.

You and your mother would converse by yourselves in the courtyard.

I tried not to imagine what those conversations were like, if you told her what I had done.

We still had not spoken since our fight.

At night, you would remain in the workshop for as long as possible, only returning to our room when you could go straight to bed.

I imagined your mother asking you seriously if there was any part of you that wanted to go to Taiwan with us, if you would at least want to be with me.

After all, weren’t we close, weren’t we like sisters, weren’t we inseparable?

More than any city, hadn’t we buried our roots in each other?

And you would reply—maybe that was the case once, but not anymore, I will not go with her, no, I will stay in Shanghai.

And so, not even a week after my father’s initial announcement, your mother and Mr.

Gao separated.

You and your mother would

stay in Shanghai, while the rest of us went to Taiwan.

Your mother tossed everything that had to do with Mr.

Gao into the

kiln and spread what she had left of your father’s belongings through the complex.

The few letters he had sent, some of his

books with his notes scrawled inside, his favorite Russian classics.

Most importantly, a medal he had received from the Communist

party.

Anything that would help protect the two of you once the Communists took over.

“I hope in your lifetime, you will not be forced to let politics dictate your love,” she said as she tossed the last of Mr.

Gao’s work orders into the kiln.

There was no evidence of their relationship, not even anything a pencil could bring back.

The next day, my father came home with three airplane tickets.

Only then did you speak to me again.

“We need to finish the story,” you said.

It was the last thing I expected you to say.

I had assumed our story abandoned.

“Okay,” I agreed, and followed you into our room.

We couldn’t agree on what had happened last, and there was no paper trail to refer to.

You were convinced your character had

Reforged some critical piece of evidence that revealed my character was walking right into a trap.

I accepted your version,

even though I did not think my character would be so dumb.

Rather than one of us writing a chapter, then passing the pencil to the other to Reforge, we wrote the last chapter together.

I wrote while you dictated.

We got caught up in the act, forgetting our feud, forgetting the war and all its politics we did not understand.

Your character raced through Shanghai, leaving graphite-stained claw marks on buildings, pushing through crowds and rickshaws, trying to reach me before it was too late.

My character was starting to understand that things were not quite what they seemed.

She was stalling for time with a soldier who had stopped her, and she managed to slip away from him but straight into the lair of his boss.

At the last possible minute, your character made it to the lair and screamed her name.

My character armored up—by then she

could call the graphite around her hand in the blink of an eye—and she caught the blade of a bayonet as it swung down at her.

The blade clashed with her armored hand, metal against graphite.

For a moment, it looked like my character’s arm would give

out.

But then, slowly, the blade began to bend, at the same time as my character’s mouth bent into a smile.

“There,” you said.

“That’s how it should end.”

“Really?” I did not feel it wrapped up the loose ends we had left behind.

“Yes. It should end with a smile. Because that’s what this story has done for us.”

“It doesn’t feel complete though,” I said.

“Well, that’s because you’re coming back, right?”

I should have gotten on my knees and apologized then, should have begged for you to come with me.

Even now, I don’t know what

would have happened if we had never fought.

Would you have left Shanghai?

You didn’t want to leave another home, I knew that,

but would our connection have been strong enough to convince you otherwise, to let you avoid the years of famine and persecution

China was about to go through?

Instead, I nodded.

“Yes, of course I’ll come back.”

We left the rest unsaid.

The next day, we stood outside the pencil company for the last time.

“I’ll see you in a few months,” I told you as you and your mother came to see us off.

You gave me the pencil, the one that contained our story.

Our mothers embraced, also exchanging a pencil.

My father went into the courtyard where he bowed before my grandmother’s favorite

bush, which was beginning to flower.

Then we gathered our belongings.

I turned away from you, following my parents.

It was my last time in Shanghai, and the last time I saw you.